Me Smith

awhile he tells himself that he don’t mind smoke and the smell of buckskin, and a tepee is a better home nor none, and that he thinks as much of this here Mary Moonbeam or Sally Star-eyes as he could think of any woman, and he wonders when the priest could come. And while he’s studyin’ it over, some white girl cuts across his trail, and, with the sight of her, Mary Moonbeam or Sally Star-eyes looks like a dirty two-spot in a clean deck.” The cowpuncher’s words came back to Smith as though they had been said only yesterday.
    “Why don’t you say what you think?” the woman asked, uneasy under his long stare.
    “No,” said Smith, rousing himself; “the Schoolmarm couldn’t give me no stake; and money talks.”
    “When you want your money?”
    “Quick.”
    “How much you want?”
    “How much you got?” he asked bluntly. He was sure of her, and he was in no mood to finesse.
    “Eight—nine thousand.”
    “If I’m goin’ to do anything with cattle this year, I want to get at it.”
    “I give you de little paper MacDonald call check. I know how to write check,” she said with pride.
    Smith shook his head. A check was evidence.
    “It’s better for you to go to the bank and get the cash yourself. Meeteetse can hitch up and take you. It won’t bother your arm none, for you ain’t bad hurt. Nine thousand is quite a wad to get without givin’ notice, and I doubt if you gets it, but draw all you can. Take a flour-sack along and put the stuff in it; then when you gets home, pass it over to me first chance. Don’t let ’em load you down with silver—I hates to pack silver on horseback.”
    To all of which instructions the woman agreed.
    That she might avoid Susie’s questions, she did not start the next morning until Susie was well on her way to school. Then, dressed in her gaudiest skirt, her widest brass-studded belt, her best and hottest blanket, she was ready for the long drive.
    Smith put a fresh bandage on her arm, and praised the scrawling signature on the check which she had filled out after laborious and oft-repeated efforts. He made sure that she had the flour-sack, and that the check was pinned securely inside her capacious pocket, before he helped her in the wagon. He had been all attention that morning, and her eyes were liquid with gratitude and devotion as she and Meeteetse drove away. She turned before they were out of sight, and her face brightened when she saw Smith still looking after them. She thought comfortably of the fast approaching day when she would be envied by the women who had married only “bloods” or “breeds.”
    Smith, as it happened, was remarking contemptuously to Tubbs, as he nodded after the disappearing wagon:
    “Don’t that look like a reg’lar Injun outfit? One old white horse and a spotted buzzard-head; harness wired up with Mormon beeswax; a lopsided spring seat; one side-board gone and no paint on the wagon.”
    “You’d think Meeteetse’d think more of hisself than to go ridin’ around with a blanket-squaw.”
    “He said he was out of tobacer, but he probably aims to get drunk.”
    “More’n likely,” Tubbs agreed. “Meeteetse’s gittin’ to be a reg’lar squawman anyhow, hangin’ around Injuns so much and runnin’ with ’em. He believes in signs and dreams, and he ain’t washed his neck for six weeks.”
    “Associatin’ too much with Injuns will spile a good man. Tubbs,” Smith went on solemnly, “you ain’t the feller you was when you come.”
    “I knows it,” Tubbs agreed plaintively. “I hain’t half the gumption I had.”
    “It hurts me to see a bright mind like yours goin’ to seed, and there’s nothin’ll do harm to a feller quicker nor associatin’ with them as ain’t his equal. Tubbs, like you was my own brother, I says that bug-hunter ain’t no man for you to run with.”
    “He ain’t vicious and the likes o’ that,” said Tubbs, in mild defense of his employer.
    “What’s ’vicious’ anyhow?” demanded Smith. “Who’s goin’ to say what’s vicious and what ain’t? I says it’s vicious to lie like he does about them idjot skulls and ham-bones he digs out and brings home, makin’ out that they might be pieces of fellers what could use one of them cotton-woods for a walkin’ stick and et animals the size of that meat-house at a meal.”
    “He never said jest that.”
    “He might as well. What I’m aimin’ at is that it’s demoralizin’ to get interested in things like that and spend